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Karen Ann Quinlan (March 29, 1954 – June 11, 1985) was an important figure in the history of the right to die controversy in the United States. When she was 21, Quinlan became unconscious after she consumed diazepam, dextropropoxyphene, and alcohol while on a crash diet and lapsed into a coma, followed by a persistent vegetative state. After doctors refused the request of her parents, Joseph and Julia Quinlan, to disconnect Karen's respirator, which they believed constituted extraordinary means of prolonging her life, her parents filed suit to disconnect Karen from her respirator. Quinlan's case continues to raise important questions in moral theology, bioethics, euthanasia, legal guardianship and civil rights. Her case has affected the practice of medicine and law around the world. A significant outcome of her case was the development of formal ethics committees in hospitals, nursing homes and hospices. ==Early life, collapse, and coma == Karen Ann Quinlan was born on March 29, 1954, in Scranton, Pennsylvania, to a young, unmarried woman of Irish American ancestry. A few weeks later, she was adopted by Joseph and Julia Quinlan, devout Roman Catholics who lived in the Landing section of Roxbury Township, New Jersey. Julia and Joseph also had a daughter, Mary Ellen, in 1956, and a son, John, in 1957.〔Quinlan, J. and Quinlan, J. D. (1977). ''Karen Ann: The Quinlans Tell Their Story''. New York: Bantam Books. ISBN 0-385-12666-2〕 Quinlan was remembered as an average student at Morris Catholic High School in Denville, New Jersey. After graduation, she worked at the Mykroy Ceramics Corporation in Ledgewood, New Jersey, from 1972 to 1974, and worked several jobs over the next year. Karen was a singer and her parents remember her as a tomboy. In April 1975, shortly after she turned 21, Quinlan left her parents' home and moved with two roommates into a house a few miles away in Byram Township, New Jersey. Around the same time, she went on a radical diet, reportedly in order to fit into a dress that she had bought. On April 15, 1975, a few days after moving into her new house, Quinlan attended a friend's birthday party at a local bar (then known as Falconer's Lackawanna Inn on Lake Lackawanna in Byram Township, New Jersey). She had eaten almost nothing for two days. At the party she reportedly drank a few gin and tonics and took Valium. Shortly afterwards she felt faint and was quickly taken home and put to bed. When friends checked on her about 15 minutes later, they found she was not breathing. An ambulance was called and mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was attempted. Eventually some color returned to her pallid skin, but she did not regain consciousness. Quinlan was admitted to Newton Memorial Hospital in New Jersey in a coma. She remained there for nine days in an unresponsive condition before being transferred to Saint Clare's Hospital, a larger facility. Quinlan weighed when admitted to the hospital. Quinlan had suffered irreversible brain damage after experiencing an extended period of respiratory failure (lasting no more than 15–20 minutes). No precise cause of her respiratory failure has been given. Her brain was damaged to the extent that she entered a persistent vegetative state, a state of completely altered consciousness. Her eyes were "disconjugate" (they no longer moved in the same direction together). Her EEG showed only abnormal slow-wave activity. Over the next few months she remained in the hospital and her condition gradually deteriorated. She lost weight—eventually weighing less than . She was prone to unpredictable, violent thrashing of her limbs. She was given nasogastric feeding and a ventilator to help her breathe. 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア（Wikipedia）』 ■ウィキペディアで「Karen Ann Quinlan」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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